Peabody, Elizabeth

One of the famed "Peabody Sisters" of Salem, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894) was one of the most important women of her time.

She opened and ran two schools in Boston. She later opened and ran the nation's first kindergarten and was largely responsible for the spread of the kindergarten movement in America.

She was also a publisher, one of the first female publishers, printing anti-slavery tracts, children's books by Nathaniel Hawthorne (husband to her sister Sophia) and published, the Dial, a journal of the Transcendentalists who gathered at her Boston bookstore.

She thought it was important to improve the lives of women and minorities, and founded a school for orphaned children of former slaves.

She was an advocate of antislavery and of Transcendentalism.

After her death, friends opened the Elizabeth Peabody House, a combination social service agency and kindergarten in Boston, to carry on her work. It is still in operation today.